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A Dozen Top YouTube Marketing Strategies

Article marketing is so passe’…

…Okay maybe that’s not entirely true, but the fact is that today’s consumer is a lot more interested and (more importantly) compelled to purchase by a video than by an article. The reason should be obvious: articles employ words on a page while videos employ moving images and sound.

The top online marketers know this, which is why YouTube marketing has become one of the preeminent marketing strategies of today. Read on to discover 12 handy tips for maximizing your YouTube marketing effectiveness:

1. Name Your Channel Well: Your YouTube channel is like your brand on that site; in fact if you already have a brand name, it should be the name of your channel. If you don’t have a brand name yet, now is the time to think of one that’s short, catchy and easy-to-spell.

2. Add Keywords To Your Title: Your title appears above the browser bar and while YouTube uses your channel name as your title by default, you can actually use a longer title than your channel name. Therefore, this gives you the opportunity to include some of your top keywords and improve your YouTube channel’s SEO. Consider your title as a combination of your channel name plus a brief description of what it’s about.

3. Use Tags Smartly: The common instinct may be to use your top keywords as your tags, but if there’s heavy competition for those keywords, then they’re not going to do you much marketing good. Rather it’s better to use your best keywords for which there is not such heavy competition. This increases the likelihood that when someone types in a search that includes your tags, they’ll be directed to your channel, with your videos appearing closer to the top of the search results rather than pulling up an endless assortment of relevant videos in which yours can be found somewhere, after lots of scrolling and clicking, probably, on page 2, 3, 4 or higher. (People don’t often click past page 1 of search results, even on YouTube.)

Low competition keywords, by the way, can be found using Google’s AdWords keyword tool, as well as most other keyword selection tools available these days. Another useful tagging trick: use your competition’s keywords so that your video will show up in the Related Videos section whenever their videos are viewed.

4. Optimize Annotations: Your annotation is your brief description of your video. Don’t do without one, as it’s another SEO opportunity, not to mention that it provides value to the would-be viewer who wants to know what to expect or what they’re looking at. More importantly, optimize your annotations by including in them a specific call to action. Most likely it will be a link to your YouTube channel page or to the subscribe page for your channel. At the very least, include a link to another YouTube video produced by you. Take note, however, that these are all internal links within YouTube. That’s because YouTube won’t let you use the annotation field to place an external link (that is, to another website, not even yours).

5. Build Your Library: Don’t stop after you populate your channel with all the videos you can think of. Think of more. What keeps people interested, what keeps them coming back for more, is a steady supply of fresh new content. Remember YouTube marketing is all about providing content. It’s a lot like article marketing except with videos. To get people to subscribe to your content, in this case your videos, you need to keep pumping out fresh videos. Setting up a channel is only the first step; every step thereafter is maintaining it. An illustration: how long would you keep watching your favorite TV station if suddenly they only started rotating the same 5 shows (literally, the same 5 episodes) night after night?

6. Content Is Not Advertising: People can see through a thinly veiled advertisement with no effort, these days. So forget about posting those sales videos on YouTube; they’ll do you no good. Content doesn’t try to sell people anything, or even sell them on anything. Content provides information and entertainment.

7. Track Trends: If you can stay on top of the trends (or at least keep abreast of them) then you can create videos on the fly to add to your channel related to these trends as they affect or interest your niche. Doing this tracking is not as difficult as you may think. Just go to the YouTube Blog: http://youtube-trends.blogspot.com.br/ and read up on all the latest YouTube trends.

8. Create Unique Custom Backgrounds For Your Infomovies: An “infomovie” is essentially a slideshow or PowerPoint style presentation with voiceover. When you produce these, you have the option of creating your own unique background on which you can place your brand name, logo and, of course, website URL in one of the corners. Don’t overlook this opportunity to market yourself with every slide. This is especially valuable because many times (if you’re lucky) your infomovie will be embedded on other websites; but you don’t want to have to rely on those webmasters to remember (or care) to include your name, description, contact information, link, etc. with the video. By incorporating it into every shot of the video, you subvert the need to rely on anyone but yourself to tell people who really brought them that information.

9. Size Screencast Videos Right: Screencast videos can look fuzzy and unattractive if improperly sized. Ideal is 360p (640 x 360). If you can’t do that, second best is 854 x 480. What you don’t want to use unless you absolutely have to is 720p.

10. Face Time: No, we’re not talking about Apple’s version of Skype here. We’re talking about you: your face, getting as much screentime on your YouTube channel as possible. People like knowing the people behind the businesses they do business with. They’re more inclined to do business with you if they feel like they know the you behind the business. So give your YouTube channel a face: your face. Appear in your own videos speaking directly to the audience (i.e. camera) as often as it is both possible and appropriate. A suggestion for making this easier on you: script several videos featuring you to shoot all in the same session. Then filter those videos out to your channel one at a time over a period of time.

11. Short Attention Span Theater: That’s YouTube alright: theater for the short of attention span. So keep your videos mercifully short too, or your viewers will take no mercy on you. (Actually, they’ll just click over to another channel more pleasing to their ADD). The most effective YouTube videos only need be 1-2 minutes in length. And if you need longer than that to convey your message, break it up into several videos. That benefits you as well as your viewer, by giving you more of a presence on YouTube through the simple virtue of having more pages of videos (remember: only one video per page; so more videos mean more pages).

12. Don’t Forget Your Link: One of the biggest oversights to avoid in putting together a YouTube channel is not including an active link to your website in the sidebar. And if you have more than one website, no problem: YouTube lets you add multiple links to your channel’s sidebar. However, you don’t want to give your visitors too many choices of outbound links to click. Choose just the one or ones that will do you the greatest good and include your other links on those pages.

I agree with everything here except for the sizing screencasts bit. I don’t see what the problem with 720p is. A video has to be at least 1280 x 720 to be listed as HD on YouTube. Plus, YouTube automatically provides SD versions for those with slower internet connections.

Hi Tim,
I believe this post of yours is going to be very helpful for me and for a lot of bloggers, especially those who are newbies and have not yet used Youtube or maximized Youtube as part of their marketing strategy. I agree on your #7 Tip, keeping yourself up-to-date with the current trends can be a great advantage to use for your marketing campaigns as people who are into that trend or are interested about that particular trend will surely take a look on your videos and as a result will become your visitors and potential customers. Also, I agree that people have a short attention span, so keep videos short yet interesting, or break it up into several short videos. Thanks for sharing!

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